Stone By Stone
by anactoria
Summary: Sherlock has a world inside his head. It's shrinking.  Post-Reichenbach.


It begins with a door.

It begins with a door that is not there, and oh, doesn't that just sound like the start of some tedious riddle? Sherlock wouldn't pay it any mind, ordinarily; wouldn't be doing so now, if _his mind_ weren't where this particular door happens to (no longer) be.

Riddles, though, are deliberately set. Designed to lead up to a glib conclusion, smugly delivered. This leads nowhere, not obviously or otherwise. A wide corridor with thirty-six surplus inches of smooth, uninterrupted wall. (A splintering mess of questions.) No clues. Not a riddle, then.

So, the door. Not an important one, relatively speaking. It opens onto a small storage room, more a cupboard, really. (Dates, old email addresses, scraps of years-old news stories. Things that may come in useful, but that are unlikely ever to be pressing.) Sherlock usually passes it without looking in. And now it is not there.

No marks on the wall. No clues. Just surplus data, neatly deleted, but for those three glaring feet of absence. And the fact that he _didn't_.

Nothing essential lost here. Certainly nothing pertaining to Jim Moriarty's web of contacts, or to the creation (or imminent, inevitable destruction) of Richard Brook. Nothing currently relevant. From that point of view, no cause for alarm. (From others, sirens shrieking, lights flashing. The imagery automatic, tired; a neural pathway he's never bothered trying to rewire. Vague associations, sense-memories without use. Not interesting enough. Information, though; he always controls that. Its architecture doesn't get ideas of its own and start unravelling. Doesn't. Didn't.)

John would tell him that it's perfectly understandable, a symptom of stress and sleeplessness. John would tell him to get some rest.

That night, he stares at the ceiling for twenty-seven minutes before giving up. No clues there, either.

Next, it's a study on the third floor that goes missing. The door is still there, this time, but behind it just a bare stone wall.

The time after that, it's the music room. (He doesn't venture in, often. Pieces he's grown bored of and doesn't play any more; melodies and sounds that he might need to recognise, one day. Not relevant now; maybe in future.)

(And, untouched upon the music stand, two sheets of handwritten notation. Irene's piece.)

Perhaps it's for the best. (Something John would say.) There are many pieces of information concerning Irene Adler that might be relevant. This isn't one of them. But: he didn't destroy it of his own volition; didn't wall up the entrance to this room; gave his mind no permission to demolish it.

"This," Sherlock tells the wall, "is unacceptable."

Next time, the library is gone.

The door is neither sealed nor vanished. Opens onto what might be imagined as a precipice (but doesn't feel like one), a (not dizzying, not echoing) expanse of what can only be described as void. Door slammed shut on reflex, eyes pressed shut. He has to take one deep breath and then another in order to compose himself.

He studies the door, the frame, for marks (fingerprints? his own?), the corridor for footprints. Nothing. Exactly: nothing. The library is, simply, _not there_. Eaten. Burned away. Without his permission, again—or, at least, without any permission that he remembers giving.

An intruder? Possibly; he has slept only in unfamiliar rooms, owned by unfamiliar people, of late. Ample opportunity for a drugging and/or a little hypnotic suggestion. But there's been no unaccustomed morning drowsiness, no tampering with the rooms. (He'd notice.) More importantly, no attempt made to hide the evidence. An intruder would have tried to cover up the damage.

Except—but no: the possibility entertained for a microsecond, then dismissed. Jim Moriarty is (almost certainly) alive, but he's a more flamboyant kind of vandal. Wouldn't be able to resist a figurative can of spraypaint and a smiley face. Or, at least, a riddle.

Eliminating the impossible. A rebellious subconscious, then: not a welcome prospect, particularly not when it's his own. Sherlock wonders, with a brief spike of amusement, whether there's a shrink on the planet who'd be willing to face the task. It wouldn't help, but it might be amusing. Possibly. Possibly not, probably not.

(John would tell him to go anyway. John would look defeated as he spoke, wouldn't even expect a response, but John would tell him.)

(Or maybe not. Maybe John knows him too well, now, to bother. Maybe he'd leave the subject well alone and offer a cup of tea or an anecdote about his day, instead, for the sake of offering something.)

(John sees a psychiatrist of his own again, now. John isn't here.)

Briefly, he considers psychedelics (mind-expansion, the doors of perception: well-worn clichés, mildly nauseating) but dismisses the thought almost immediately. Introducing an alien element, probably not a good idea right now. He already knows that the best and only weapon he has is his waking mind. It has never not been enough.

(It is not enough.)

Doors open onto nothingness, or refuse to open at all; corridors end abruptly in walls that were not there before, quickly and crudely thrown up; staircases crumble into nothingness mid-flight. Stone by stone, the labyrinth of his mind, shrinking. No: being shrunk. Something in him dismantling inner space, deeming the facts he has stored, the quiet spaces set aside for thought, less important than itself.

At last, the central staircase is all that remains. It terminates in a door. Steel, painted green, bar and a fire exit sign. He didn't put it there. (Except, of course, he did.) The air smells antiseptic.

He ascends because there is no other option. Footsteps echoing; real-world physical properties. Rumble of traffic outside. Not empty space; not void.

Steps out onto the roof, hears a voice, apologising. (His.) Figures in the street (no, just the one), phone in his hand. Wasn't there before. Tosses it aside.

This has already happened. He knows all the details. Can't be altered. Why?

Eye-wateringly cold up here. Standing on the edge, now. Dizzying. Two hundred and fifty feet. Not void.

Falls. Knows. Has known all along.

* * *

><p>"You bastard," says John, once he's finished staring with his mouth open. He looks like he's about to hit someone. He probably is. "You total, utter, <em>fucking <em>bastard."

But what Sherlock hears is the sound of a hundred doors opening.


End file.
